


A Matter of Comparison

by anstaar



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Gen, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, a prison... in space!, emotional repression for even more fun and profit, failure to take dramatic revelations seriously, generally just ridiculous, it's a matter of narrative!!, not asking any hard moral question about destroying planets, old friends and where to find them, references to Carry On, references to Deep Space Nine, star trek references for fun and profit, the secret life of judoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23036266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstaar/pseuds/anstaar
Summary: After the events of the finale, the Doctor contemplates perspectives of recent revelations with some old friends
Comments: 13
Kudos: 21





	1. A Matter of Comparison

**Author's Note:**

> any hint in the summary that this is at all serious is completely false
> 
> also, too small to feel like they're appropriate to tag mentions/implications of Anji/Dave, Anji/husband, Fitz/Trixie, Fitz/Eight & Fitz/13 (and, ofc, Odo/Quark)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which some potential narrative parallels are suggested

“It’s a prison,” says a strangely familiar voice as the Doctor is still trying to get a better view through the window. There’s obviously an advanced forcefield actually keeping them safe from the endless void of space, which makes the glowing bars just needlessly dramatic. It’s strangely familiar in the sense that it’s very strange to hear a familiar voice answering her mostly rhetorical question very far away from Earth, in a space prison. It’s also strange because regeneration changes hearing, to varying degrees, so known voices have to be re-categorized. Each regeneration means literally hearing with new ears, some of which are just a bit more sensitive to American accents than others, as he’d explained to Peri. Now, she can admit that sounds slightly less convincing than the Doctor had thought it did then, which actually, when you think about it, lends more proof to her point. In a way. 

There are two people standing in the doorway of the room. The Doctor guesses, and after all her centuries of experience with prisons, her guesses are pretty damn reliable, the room is a general transport spot instead of the actual cell she’ll probably be expected to stay in for her life sentence/maybe the next few weeks if it’s very well designed. There is certainly some very impressive technology involved in this operation, very few things in the universe can break into the TARDIS, however skeptical her companions sometimes look when she says that. It could be very important to learn what’s going on here. It’s not at all a relief to be thrust into a dramatic and confusing situation where she has lots of outside factors to focus on. 

Some observers might think that the Doctor’s visitors make a strange pair. The woman standing on the left is the one who had offered the unenlightening answer to the Doctor’s non-question. She’s short – that is, petite, and impeccably dressed in a designer trouser suit, tailored sometime in the early 2000s, just another guess. Her hair is held back in an elegant braid, and there’s a slight smile on her face, the wry edge acknowledging the circumstances. Her male companion is much taller than her and would be even if she was in heels. He’s slouching, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. It’s a nice jacket, but it doesn’t do much to offset the impression of a scarecrow made by a farmer who believed that scrawny was in. His overly long fringe falls over his eyes, and he’s managing to radiate an aura of a shifty character you hope not to end up in a cab with, without even doing anything. 

The Doctor has had a very long, very bad day. A few long, bad days. Even _more_ long, bad days if you count by units of measurement a bit more regular than her sleep cycle. There have been a lot of unexpected things in the last few hours, most of them pretty awful. Even being abducted to a new space prison goes on that list, even though that happens so often that ‘unexpected’ might not be exactly the right word. After it all, possibly the most unexpected part is the completely genuine smile she finds spreading across her face, outside of her control. 

“Anji! Fitz!” Important questions: what are they doing here? What’s going on? Have they joined some evil (or possibly just different priority having) group that wants to lock up the Doctor? Is that why they seem to know who she is, which is a pretty hard guess for a lot of people, sometimes annoyingly so? The right time to ask any of those: after the hugs to celebrate the fact that they exist at all. 

The hugs feel slightly different than her memory, of course. There’s the different perspective that comes with different length arms and a new height. Admittedly, not as much difference in height as if they’d known her in some of her other bodies, but it’s amazing what even an inch, or two, or three, can do to help her understand why Anji used to complain about Fitz being too tall. Anji’s still shorter than her, but the angle with Fitz is feels strange against old memories, though he hasn’t lost the how to give a decent hug training, which had taken a lot of months of awkward waving hands. They even still smell basically the same, a fact she usually keeps to herself as it falls under ‘a little too much information about what can be picked up by more honed senses, but, “Where have you been getting Thollian cigarettes?”

* * *

The prison canteen is nice. That might be odd but pointing out odd here is like mentioning there’s a touch of radiation somewhere on Skaro. Likely to cause slight embarrassment. Possible embarrassment had never stopped the Doctor from doing anything, but there are more important topics than the nice selection of snacks, or the nice Roman legionaries from the 1990s gambling for them. 

“A paradox prison,” the Doctor repeats. 

“A prison for paradoxes,” Fitz corrects himself, setting down the tea. He pauses. “Which might make it a bit of a paradox. Basically, instant headache material. 

The Doctor considers this. It’s true that before actually seeing them again, she has started to realize that her memories of traveling with Fitz and Anji had been slightly confused and contained several large gaps, though she doubts anyone who wasn’t a Time Lord would be aware that they had suddenly always remembered something. “With the axis gone, I suppose this is a replacement. How long have you been here?”

“Ages, though not as long as they would’ve liked. Turns out they were hunting for us for a while.”

“It was quite unexpected,” Anji says. There are a lot of points in that sentence, the Doctor had noticed a lack of enthusiastic agreement with Fitz’s ‘we don’t blame you at all’. Of course, Fitz had been rather more aware of the exact nature of the paradoxes. “But not the first time traveling with you was considered reason enough for imprisonment, and it’s not the worst prison we’ve been but in because of it. They’re very free with information. Told us about all the changes.” The Doctor is pretty sure Fitz should be rewarded for not adding any descriptive hand gesture to that. 

“Anji got off lightly. I’m in here for three full life sentences, on account of being a very naughty boy,” Fitz says, glumly. 

The Doctor stares at him. Anji just rolls her eyes.

“What? I didn’t come up with it. That’s my official sentence.” Fitz sighs. “It’s all like that, here, all the way down. It’s like a bloody Carry On film, with space rhinos. This is the campiest prison I’ve ever been in, and you know how heavy the competition is for that. The other week, Captain Dimple wore female body armor for two days because he panicked when his wife came in early when he was picking out her anniversary gift and couldn’t back-down after he had claimed it was for him. Oh, how we laughed. On the inside. Very deep on the inside.” 

The Doctor looks between Fitz and Anji. Usually, she would assume that Fitz was joking. Or, to be more accurate, lying, as he does with such frequency. But Fitz looks pained and Anji grimly resigned, and Anji was never as much for long jokes. 

“Judoon is a language with many nuances,” Anji says. “They have very good translators here.” 

The Doctor contemplates this mental picture. “I think I might understand why the TARDIS chooses a rough translation.”

“That would be nice,” Fitz says, fervently. “No one should have to hear what they say about musical instruments. For once, the Doctor decides not to ask. 

“They’ve picked up all my companions from that body?” She asks instead.

“No, not all of them. They picked me and Fitz up because we were the ones who traveled with your eighth self after you destroyed your planet, the first time. Before that never happened. That’s why they took me. Fitz had other charges added on. They were very pleased to have gotten all your companions who were part of that timeline.” 

The Doctor’s brow furrows. Timelines that didn’t fully happen in the timeline you happen to now inhabit can be hazy, but the more time she spends with Anji and Fitz – or just within the strange time field of the prison, but she likes to think it’s because of her friends – the more memories are filling in. Whatever other memory problems remain; the Doctor’s certain that she had traveled with more than just the two of them after that first time she had destroyed Gallifrey (with a mental note to consider finding a time to figure out if she should feel bad about that now that she remembers). 

Fitz, who’s watching her, shifts his head back the smallest fraction. He adds, “Yeah, they got me and Anji in the same day. All of the two traveling companions that you traveled with when you traveled with two of us during that time, captured. Banged us up right and proper. The two of us. Now three of us, now you’re here, locked up without a chance of any escape from our punishment.” Ah, right, being able to wander around pretty freely probably means they’re being monitored. And that the prison warden is extremely overconfident. 

“Oh – oh, that’s terrible. My two companions from after the Gallifrey mess, locked up. With me. Is there someplace I can put in an appeal?”

Anji has buried her face in her hands for some reason. The Doctor remembers that she had done that quite frequently when they’d traveled together before, but that was because her younger self had frequently deserved it. Neither she nor Fitz had even winked obviously!

* * *

“You didn’t travel with my eight self,” the Doctor finds herself admitting, somewhere around the second serving of biscuits. 

Fitz looks hurt. “I know what did and didn’t happen, and in what timeline, is all fuzzy with stuff having doubled back and happened multiple times and planets coming and going and everything, but _we_ remember it and since we’re locked up for remembering I don’t see why –”

“That’s not what I meant,” the Doctor says quickly.

The Doctor hadn’t actually meant to say it in the first place. She hadn’t really planned to tell anyone what she had learned about her past. What would be the point? And, to be very honest, she had kind of just wanted to forget it. Really, she hadn’t properly appreciated the benefits of losing her memory, back when it happened all those times. There was a lot to appreciate about a little specialized amnesia. But just because these days she doesn’t lose her memory in a particularly strong breeze, it doesn’t mean that she can’t just suppress it all. After all, she’s the Doctor and that’s what matters. Gallifrey is dead, again. Who she is now, who she chooses to be, that’s what’s important. Ancient memories she doesn’t have or the twists in her connection to her world, those aren’t. Obsessing over it all, that’s just bad habit to even think of. 

But here she is. In a prison made to punish, or at least contain, paradoxes. She’s sitting in the prison’s nicely decorated (though it had taken some, as Fitz told it, painfully unfunny hijinks to land on this tasteful decor) canteen, with old friends who were ripped from their lives because of the mess her people made of timelines. Because of the mess that she had caused and had dragged them into without thinking. The Doctor looks at faces that had known her back when he hadn’t known himself and the whole story just comes spilling out.

* * *

Fitz looks like he wants to hug her. Her memories are probably as clear as they’re going to get, which is still not entirely fleshed out, and not just because of what had or hadn’t technically happened to her. Bright side, maybe she can blame the Time Lords for that regeneration’s habit of losing his memory, what with them messing with her memories. Bad side, the biggest lost can be blamed squarely on the trauma of destroying her (sort of) home planet. And that whole business with the Matrix (now that she has some more distance, she hopes the Matrix is recovering alright, because while she might have even more problems with Gallifrey than she’d had before, which takes a lot of doing, most of the planet had nothing to do with that and if it turns out she’s responsible for the total destruction of Gallifrey for, like, the fifth time, well, that really is getting to be embarrassing). Besides, she’s pretty sure it was mostly a pattern problem. But, going through the memories she does have, she would have to admit that Fitz had spent most of his time looking like that. The Doctor hadn’t objected. 

Since they’re in the public canteen and she does still have a cup of tea, he’s holding one of her hands instead. She doesn’t feel a need to object to that, either. 

Anji, who had spent much less time looking like she wanted to hug the Doctor and much more staring at him suspiciously, for some reason he couldn’t say, looks contemplative. 

“I don’t want to, you know, ‘minimize’ feelings or anything,” Fitz says, “But are you… uh, sure? We both know about the Matrix.”

“Not entirely,” the Doctor admits. “I believe the Master was sure, but he has… issues. Like you said, we know how much can be made up and just shoved into the Matrix.”

“Oh, how I know,” Fitz mutters.

“Exactly.” It’s very easy to imagine that Gallifrey was destroyed because of a ‘hilarious’ Faction Paradox ‘prank’. Again. “But I feel like there’s a chance it’s true. Parts of it. Maybe. There were these dreams – and I didn’t remember the Faction Paradox before I was brought here.”

“That’s a relief, hopefully they’re gone. It might make up for living in a timeline with pervert rhino space-time cops.” Fitz squeezes her hand. “But you told yourself the most important thing, you’re the Doctor. You’ve never been limited by who you were before, and you’ve always been yourself, even when you didn’t remember that. Which is more than I can say.”

“I’d say you’ve done pretty well at being Fitz Kreiner.”

“No one else wanted the job.” He winks at her. As always, it makes him look ridiculous. “A child thrown through from another realm, you’re sort of like Superman.”

“Not _exactly_ ,” the Doctor says, grinning back again. 

“Yeah,” Anji says, apparently finally drawn out of her reverie, “You’re more like Odo.” Both Fitz and the Doctor turn to stare at her for a few long moments. “You know, the shapeshifter? With the nose from the Star Trek series? Dave really liked Deep Space Nine, okay?”

The Doctor continues staring. It seems the appropriate response. Anji folds her arms. 

“Think about it: a shapeshifter is tossed into another universe as a baby where it’s taken in by a scientist. There’s the terrible regime that wanted to use his powers, but instead he forges his own moral code and tries to establish some justice…”

The Doctor wonders if she should start her complaints at the amount of violent imagery associated with how she might have ended up in this universe. They don’t know how it might have gone down. 

“You have to admit, Doc,” Fitz says, a little too thoughtfully, “With your luck, you know that if you ever meet your… original species, it’d probably turn out that they’re evil and you’d end up doing the whole moral stand thing.” He rubs his chin. “And Superman just has an awesome reporter. Odo might have had a thing for that really fit and competent and emotional arc having resistance fighter, but there was that undeniable connection with the horrible gremlin man too.” For some reason, this seems to cheer him up. 

“That’s an unfair comparison,” Anji says, sweetly, “Quark had a lot of success with women.” 

Fitz sticks his tongue out at her. “I thought you didn’t pay attention to the science fiction stuff.”

Anji shrugs. “We had just started dating, I was still trying to be interested in it all. Sisko is extremely attractive.”

“Fair point. If that’s the Captain. Hey, I was usually watching when sick.”

The Doctor frowns, this distracting her from trying to figure out if she should be offended and how much. “You used to say that you couldn’t watch television when you felt sick.”

“That’s because you used to suggest we should watch football. Or cricket. Staring at a white wall was preferable.”

“Less likely to result in death,” Anji says, not under her breath. 

“ _One_ little incident at the World Cup –”

* * *

The Doctor sits on the bunk of the cell she’d finally been directed to, her past almost as mysterious as it had been the last time she’d sat in a prison with Fitz and Anji. Except in a different way. One with either less or more questions about her species. And then she’d had more help with excuses over maybe failing to have the proper amount of guilt over the whole planet destruction thing, as she remembers that very clearly. No getting away from the Time Lords being her people, either. Very, very much her people, actually. 

Which might be what the Master had been going on about. It can be hard to tell what he’s ever really going on about. Even when she isn’t ignoring what he says, which she only does sometimes. Ah well, maybe she’ll ask next time he pops up. After the definitely sincere questions about his new desire for parenthood. 

She’s in a prison, in a reach of space whose stars she doesn’t recognize, filled with remains of choked off timelines. Someone is behind this, someone who probably has to be stopped. Or at least made to send people like Anji back to their totally ordinary lives with their ordinary husbands (the Doctor’s shin still hurts from where Anji had kicked it when the Doctor had started to ask about her daughter, which, while she can understand the instinct, is rather overly violent, she just knows there’s some grudge holding there, even mentioning having new friends from Yorkshire hadn’t cleared it up). 

Anji and Fitz are currently arguing over the attractiveness ranking of Star Trek captains. The current question is whether Fitz has some 1960s eye condition which is making him rank Kirk so high on the list, or, instead, if it’s just that Anji hasn’t seen the original series and there are nuances missed when you just have a picture without the acting. Anji seems highly skeptical over the ‘acting’ impacting her position. The Doctor still doesn’t know what the two of them have against a little football. 

Trix is probably out there in the prison, possibly even working to save them. Or at least Anji. She had ended up getting along quite well with Anji, in the end. Fitz might be less certain. Fitz had told the Doctor that it had been a mutual breakup (and he’d tried to pretend he’d been aware they’d been together), but he had spent a lot of time making sure the Doctor was between him and Trix when they’d traveled together. Compassion, luckily, is deeply unlikely to be anywhere close. 

The Doctor closes her eyes, putting together all that she’s learned so far. The prison is already starting to take shape in her mind. There are already groups that might be called on to help, and others that will need to be watched because they shouldn’t be let free. So many pleasant distractions from important questions about potential internal turmoil that she can just put off, forever sounds long enough. 

She misses her friends, her fam, but at least she’s not alone. She'll get back to them. Whoever has brought them here has no idea what a big mistake they’ve made in giving her back her friends. When they meet, she’ll have to thank them for that. Fitz, Anji, much more important pieces of her past than long dead 'founders', snapping into place.

…But the Odo comparison is _completely_ off base.


	2. A Matter of Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> three important (?) conversations the Doctor has in prison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some spoilers for Zagreus and various EDAs
> 
> important contemplation of emotion, morality, the past, the unknown past and so on continues to be avoid like the champions they are

The prison kitchen is being renovated. Occasionally prisoners pause to watch with hollow eyes as their guards and renowned police beings across a lot of a time and space ‘accidentally’ hit each other with ladders, fall through walls they tried to prop themselves casually to hide the holes in the walls, and make what everyone couldn’t help being aware were suggestive comments. As Fitz says, there’s not enough finger quoting power in the world to call them ‘jokes’. The Doctor likes to think that she shows how much she appreciates her TARDIS, but, after seeing some of what she’s protected the Doctor from hearing, when she gets her back she’s going to apologize for anything bad she’s ever said or implied even though the TARDIS knows she hadn’t meant them. There’s a lot to be said for a universal translation system clever enough to know that some things aren’t meant to be translated. 

The Doctor stops by the renovations for the chance of stealing something useful. For most people, it would be a very slim hope. There hadn’t been anything useful in the kitchen to start with, as their meals come from food machines or from whatever warehouse they get the stuff that’s in the canteen. The range of species makes it the only sensible option for making sure they’re all fed, and that there’s none of the complicated machinery that’s needed for some inmates’ diets where it might be reached. 

The use of food machines is good, because it means that no one’s going hungry during what is clearly going to be a very long ceremony of prats. The line between a useful prison riot and trouble is timing. And where she’s standing in relation to the riot. But it also means there’s not anything very impressive on hand, unless you have hands that can make a sonic screwdriver out of spoons _and_ can draw a perfectly straight-line upside down, without artificial assistance. Not that she’s bragging. Anji is very impressive, but the Doctor knows for a fact her lines get wiggly without a ruler. Fitz had said it was one of the more pointless competitions, even for them, but that’s because he can’t even use a ruler. Give the Doctor a ruler and she could turn a food machine into a teleport (well, she could turn it into something that could be used in getting closer to a teleport), but the kitchen renovations haven’t revealed where they keep the food machines. 

The Doctor has taken a few spoons in protest of the incredibly lack of any comedic timing being inflicted on prisoners in violation of several universal treaties and has gotten to know a few of her fellow inmates. 

The Roman legionaries are her most frequent fellow suffers, as they’re terrible gamblers and watching the renovations is either a chance for betting on something when they don’t want to toss around the synthetic bones or possibly a punishment for failure. They’re mostly nice lads, apart from the insistent refusal to listen to reasonable arguments how unlikely it was, looking at history, that a strong Roman Empire would last for 3000 years with few significant changes apart from technology. They do have lived experience on their side, and no one likes to think there was outside interference. 

Korell, a member of the Monan Host, might actually just enjoy the sight, depending on how different her species are in her timeline. The Doctor’s memory of the ten minutes he had spent watching a Monan opera before sneaking out, well, before setting off an alarm by breaking through a window but he’d _meant_ to sneak out, suggests that this might appeal to her. The Doctor can’t claim that being told that his rudeness placed a permanent ban on attending another, even now, has ever really crushed her. It hasn’t even driven her to sneak back, despite her usual inclination to go somewhere as soon as someone has told here not to. 

There’s an Ikkaban who has never said what their name is, who might come by to see her. The Doctor tries not to feel awkward around them. They have a nice smile and the poetry is quite good, but they don’t know that she’s a Time Lord. It’s for the best, but it puts an uncomfortable twist in the idea of making friends. The Doctor has never liked hiding who she is. Fake names, pretending to be someone else, that just causes more trouble. She’s the Doctor, and there’s every reason to announce that first off. Of course, she generally holds back a lot of other details and unnecessary facts and maybe possibly sometimes facts that, if looked at from a certain point of view, might make people say she’s lying a little instead of just not sharing everything immediately. But that’s different. 

Then, of course, there’s Fitz, who slouches next to her, frequently ordered to turn out his mostly empty pockets as the Doctor’s sleight of hand with kitchen implements goes completely unnoticed. There are certain constants in an uncertain universe. 

A Judoon slaps his thighs as another Judoon realizes that he’s gotten the sink faucet the wrong way around. The Doctor doesn’t sigh.

“I love learning new things. Endless, curiosity, that’s me, everyone knows that. If there’s something new to see, I want to see it. If there’s information to have, I want to be informed. I have, on several occasions, had a nose that could be pointed at dramatically by people who want underscore how much I love sticking it into places. Is there anything I love more than learning new things?”

“Homemade Jammy Dodgers.”

“Secret information is meant to be known, and I want to know it. I’m terrible at letting other people have secrets, always earwigging like a rude earwig and talking about it. Gets me into trouble all the time. Is there anything I hate more than not knowing something?”

“Olives. Those Venusian pie like things. Some kinds of grapes.”

The Doctor looks away from the Judoon who are circling each other now and over at Fitz. “Are you hungry?”

“A little bit,” he admits. “It’s being in a kitchen. And I quit smoking. _Before_ you got here.”

“Thollian cigarettes aren’t meant for humans. There are serious side effects.”

“I did mention quitting, _Doctor_. Even though we’re locked up. Besides, they didn’t have any Lucky Strikes. And I never went blue or started seeing anything weird, the standard effect in humans.”

Fitz doesn’t say that he’s not entirely the standard human he might want to be. He doesn’t call the Doctor a liar. He doesn’t remind her that she had been hiding from information the entire time they had traveled together, first about the war and then about what he’d done, clinging to ignorance as a shield. 

The Doctor tries to look stern, “You probably stopped just in time. One more and you’d be lying on the floor, dancing elephants waltzing through your head.”

“Might have been better than this.” Fitz had always held just as hard to not knowing

She sighs. “Yeah. See, the problem is that there’s _too much_ translation. Me, I love seeing unique social customs. Have to go to prison to see the intricate nature of Judoon life? It would be hard to resist. But this is clearly translating at a level that makes it all seem familiar. We’re actively been stopped from being able to feel the wonder of something new.”

Fitz twirls a toothpick between his fingers. “Right. So, it’s not that it’s that they somehow make pratfall’s dull.” 

“Not at all.”

“Or how it feels a bit like watching Judoon foreplay.”

They both think about that for a moment. 

“Fitz, the ways the countless species of the universe find to express their love –”

“Don’t worry, Doc. Believe me, I’ll never say those words again.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

“Who’s in charge of all this?” The Doctor asks the universe.

“It’s one in the morning,” groans the part of the universe lying on the floor next to her bed. “Spiritually,” Fitz adds as he rolls over, which doesn’t really make sense, but also does cut off her point about the actual time and the argument about what that even means in space. There’s a groan from the area where she’d last seen Anji, which is probably agreement. The Doctor had spoken quite quietly, really, but if her friends just happen to have been woken up by the soft noise, well, she’ll be fine if they go back to sleep.

Fitz pushes himself up, his hair is sticking up in odd directions and there’s an imprint on his face from where he’d ended up lying with his face pressed against a beaded bracelet. After the speech the Captain had made about people who took more than their fair share of the arts and crafts material, not that she was going to name names, this time, but a little thought for fellow prisoners wouldn’t go awry, the Doctor had decided they should probably use some of the supplies. It had all turned out to be completely useless for making a locator/signal through space, but you can make a nice friendship bracelet. 

The detritus of crafts littering the cell floor isn’t a sign that she’d gotten bored and ended up just tossing things into the air to test the artificial gravity. That’s important information. Besides, friendship bracelets are dangerous. If you make a bracelet for one friend, you have to make one for all of them, and that’s a fast way to remember all the friends that aren’t around and those who couldn’t wear one even if they were. And of the friends who are here, only Fitz will wear them (Anji had muttered something about taking advantage, which is nonsense as she had seen that fifteen friendship bracelets make him smug as well as the Doctor can).

Anji’s face is not happy in the dim light of the prison’s artificial night, but it’s nice to see. She shuffles closer, swearing under her breath as she tries to finger comb her tangled hair. She glares at Fitz’s joke about his delicate ears not being ready for rough language, and probably a bit because he had been the one to suggest a sleepover. 

“You’re just getting old,” the Doctor tells them, trying not to pick out if that’s true.

“It happens to some of us,” Anji says, deciding that she’s not too annoyed to not lean on Fitz as they sit against the bed. 

“Not me,” Fitz only manages to half cover his yawn. “I’m the picture of youth. That’s why I need so many naps.”

“I am sometimes reminded of a toddler.”

“Because I’m so cute?”

“…Have we had the conversation about thinking about the words you say out loud?”

“You could just ignore them.”

“How I wish I could. Why did you wake us up, Doctor?”

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” the Doctor protests. “I was just talking to myself.”

Fitz covers another yawn. “You asked who was in charge of this place. Twice. Loudly. And there was humming.”

“Must have been the air.”

Anji looks exasperated, both at the Doctor’s airy claim and at Fitz’s amusement. She is older. A few years, maybe more. It’s so difficult to tell specific numbers, with humans, but the Doctor can feel the weight of it. Anji had always had a place in time, even as disconnected as she’d been after Dave’s death and her uncertainty with the future. Anji now has so many threads, not tying her down but woven by her. The Doctor can almost see them. The daughter pointing out her picture in the classroom, happy and healing in her home. The husband working on his latest piece, putting down his pen to listen fully to what she has to say. The brother waiting for her outside their parents’ house, the shared rueful smile but not true worry about going in. The clear notes, written out longhand, on economic history. The friends – She stops herself from looking further. 

‘I thought I was done with this,’ Anji had said. The Doctor had known what she meant. Done with being ripped out of a place in time, however much she enjoyed parts of the journey. Done with the Doctor, because Anji had always known when to cut and walk away. High finance. High danger. She had never been consumed by it. The Doctor had always admired that, been glad of it, even as he hadn’t really wanted to think about all it meant. The Doctor has never been any good at dealing with the future. 

Anji is older and tired and exasperated (the last part not being anything new, admittedly), but she smiles, affection not worn away by years or troubles or the Doctor waking them up at, spiritually one in the morning because she doesn’t want to be alone. “You’re certain it’s not the Judoon? Yes, a they can’t figure out that if you want someone to take something from your back you should stand still instead of twirling around, but this was only a matter of arresting you.”

“I’m surrounded by comedians, and their accomplices. The Judoon are always working for someone, first off, and, second, it was a lot more than just arresting me, which I often choose to go alone with so that no one gets hurt. They broke into the TARDIS! It takes a lot to break into the TARDIS.”

She decides to take Anji and Fitz’s looks at tiredness instead of extreme skepticism. Just because one or two things had just happened to get through while they had been traveling, they don’t always seem convinced on the difficulty.

“Maybe they used magic.” Fitz suggests.

“There’s no such thing as magic.”

“Right, sorry, maybe they used the ‘energy fields’ that are brought into existence by chanting and blood sacrifice and can break into TARDISs.” He pats his pocket, before remembering that he’s given up smoking. 

“Or other psychic energy from a planet reaching out.”

“Or a very scientific actual wooden ship that can travel in time, crewed by monkeys.”

“Or you left the door open –”

“Thank you for the list of things that can affect the TARDIS,” the Doctor says, in a very dignified tone. “But those aren’t people.”

“As long as Sabbath’s dead. He is, right? This is _just_ his sort of thing.” Fitz looks around, like Sabbath is going to loom out of the shadows. Which is just the sort of thing he’d loved doing, back when he’d followed them around with the stupid fake names. 

“Sabbath is dead. He probably didn’t make it out of the river.”

“Good.”

“Fitz.”

“Sorry, Doctor, every life is unique and special, and he was especially awful. I’m not going to start feeling bad he’s still dead now.” He folds his arms, stubborn on this point.

“Isn’t it late for _you_ to start feeling broken up about his death,” Anji says, pointedly. That probably breaks Fitz’s stubbornness far more quickly than something the Doctor might have said, though the awkward shifting isn’t much better. 

The Doctor had quickly picked up the shape of the fight they’d had, some time before they arrived. It wasn’t difficult, though she was helped by having heard the outlines of it before. She can’t imagine that Anji was happier with Fitz’s defense after she’d learned more of what the Doctor had done, especially when it had landed her here. Attack, defense, and the Doctor standing at a distance pretending not to listen. 

“Maybe it’s you, Doc.” Fitz says, breaking the uncomfortable silence by pretending not to notice it. 

“It’s not me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m very sure.”

“You always say that when there’s reason for you not to be sure,” Anji interjects, pointed silence covered again by joining in on Fitz’s teasing.

“I do not.”

“You do, and it makes sense.”

“It does not.”

“You said that the Time Lords had their own former of putting away people from broken timelines,” Anji says, because she’s too good at listening.

“ _And_ you said that you’ve been tons of people you don’t even remember. Those people could’ve been anything. Maybe it’s one of them.”

The Doctor really doesn’t want to think about that possibility, about everyone she might have been. Are they still part of her, if she doesn’t remember? Are their actions still her responsibility to fix? _Has_ some of what she’s done been fixing things that her responsibility? 

“Doctor,” Anji says, and from the looks she’s getting, she may have said some of that out loud. Or maybe they’ve just gotten too good at reading this face. Anji takes one of her hands. “Doctor. You don’t take responsibility for half the things you know for _sure_ you’ve done. Don’t let the possibilities stop you from moving forward when the reality hasn’t.” 

“…Thanks, Anji.”

Fitz pats her arm. “Yeah, destroying your planet was really hard, but you managed to do it multiple times.”

Anji rests her head against the bed, the mattress not doing much to muffle her voice. “The sincerity with which you say, ‘that must have been hard for _you_ ’ to the person who _destroyed_ the planet is the actual reason you should be in space prison.”

“But it isn’t, so we still have a breakout to figure out.” 

The Doctor suspects that really shouldn’t have made her feel better. But then, they’re right: she has a lot of practice at not thinking about those questions. Might as well use it.

* * *

Staking out the teleport room is boring. It’s almost certainly necessary – the Doctor might not have been able to find out anything much when she’d been there the first time, but she had been understandably off balance and another reading, now she finally has something like a scanner, should give them something – but it’s extremely boring. Most stake outs are boring. People _talk_ about, or right about in books, stake outs like they’re exciting, but they are, when you get to it, the time _before_ anything interesting happens. 

There’s not even the danger of being caught being somewhere they shouldn’t be. No one seems to have any problem with the three of them lurking outside the teleport room. The lurking is completely unnecessary. It’s almost bars-on-the-windows unnecessary. Actually, that’s probably unfair, but she’s very bored. It’s harder to be fair when bored. Or when someone is beating you at scrabble. That’s why ruling the world would be awful. 

After approximately ten thousand years, or at least almost a minute, Fitz finally draws an x. He ignores Anji’s sigh at his choice, even controlling his slight twitch. The Doctor considers the possibilities available. Now that it’s her tun, she completely understands Fitz’s slowness. It’s like landing the TARDIS, as soon as she draws an o, she’s settled on one path, and closed every other possibility. Except instead of it being a path to see an exciting new planet (or space station, or exciting old planet), it’s to see if she’ll win in two moves or three in an extremely boring children’s game. But, in some philosophical sense, they’re the same. Who had said that everyday life was a form of time travel? Was it her, when she had the happy confidence of a TARDIS to skip the boring bits? This is one of the boring bits. 

“Just how evil do you think they are?” Fitz asks, gaze half on her and half just into space, now that he doesn’t have a vital task. 

“I don’t know if I can say that they’re _evil_ ,” the Doctor says, a digression into morality not entirely usual from Fitz, but a welcome escape. “Misguided, possibly. Trying to do what they think is the right thing, in a way I disagree with. Maybe something we can’t guess at. But I wouldn’t go straight to the worst intentions.”

“Not whoever, or whatever, has us here,” Fitz clarifies, “Your original people. Where do you think they fall, one to ten?” He raises his hands. “I’ve been thinking about this.” 

“Too rare, yet worrying, words,” Anji says, morbid fascination obvious. The Doctor almost wants to find a mirror to see what her own expression is doing. 

“Look, I know a bit about Time Lords. You said that your stalker said that the whole regeneration thing Time Lords can do is because of you, right? They added an alien code to their biodata to make their xenophobic lording it over everyone suitably ironic and so on. And obviously that’s huge, I’m not saying it’s not, regeneration is amazing and terrifying and can be used in horrifying ways, and everything must have been affected, but it’s not really, you know, the big thing.”

Fitz pauses for air, and possibly in hope that someone will stop him, but he plows on. 

“The time travel? All that biological connection with time stuff that got grafted on around Rassilon’s time that he probably just took all the credit for without really doing anything because he’s the perfect example of all the darkness at the foundation of Time Lord society even as it went from cheering on death sports to one that claimed to be civilized? When we were traveling together in the timeline where Sam stayed on Ha’olam, you told me about the Divergence and how that was the great secret crime and why you were never going to go back to Gallifrey, and now you really meant it.” 

“The Divergence?” It sounds familiar, but just out of reach. She hadn’t thought much about the second timeline she’d traveled with Fitz, and with Anji, ever since she’d regained her memories of the first. Unlike the timeline that had only come back into focus inside the prison, she’d remembered, but now she’s trying to think about it, her mind skates over it, failing to pick at any specific memory. 

“All those beings from a different universe that would’ve evolved to surpass the Time Lords except that Rassilon locked them away so they could never exist? In part because of his now ironic extreme xenophobia. You were very upset over it. I got the impression it’s why you weren’t speaking with Romana, even though that Romana was _way_ less evil than the other one? You don’t remember?”

“Not… really,” she has to admit. “But it sounds just like something Rassilon would’ve done. And I’m missing memories of a whole lifetime from around them, I can believe I’m missing a few more. Rassilon had a lot of power as President, once they started changing parts of Gallifrey’s history, making sure no one had ever learned of that was probably on his list of small chores.”

“Rassilon was President? The Time Lords brought back a terrible, formerly dead President, who was in charge when the planet was destroyed, _again_? Is this what you meant about time correcting changes?” 

Anji coughs. “As much fun as I’m sure it is for you to go over the Time Lords greatest hits, what does it have to do with whether whatever species the Doctor might or might not have originally come from, depending on reliability of reports from people who change their own history as transmitted through your weird copycat, are evil or not? Do you think regeneration makes people evil?” Anji sounds far too open to hearing that potential argument, the Doctor really has to pencil in a time to be insulted at some point in the near future.

“No! Not necessarily. I think I might have gotten distracted thinking about how you have all those extra changes to your biodata that probably make you very different from whatever regenerating species you might have come from – if you did, obviously. Half Gallifreyan, half something; that’s what they kept saying. It’s not even a question of ‘why’, is it? We live in a universe that has ‘higher’ powers entertaining themselves on yachts. Say what you want about the cold equations of the universe, but the concept of entropy is out there trying to thump life while wearing a stupid hat. Infinite universes, only two real possibilities.”

The Doctor looks down at the piece of paper. Once she makes her mark, there’s no way Fitz can win. She looks at her friends, who clearly have been locked up for far too long. 

“Fitz.” She pauses, trying to choose her words carefully. She knows questions of sanity are a sensitive topic and she’s a good friend, and also there’s not nearly enough stuff to tinker with as a distraction if he starts crying. “I know the universe often appears to have patterns. And we’ve gone to those planets where logic works like you think it should instead of like…logic. But that doesn’t mean that the only two possibilities for my native species are ‘evil’ or ‘tragically dead’. That is, actually, very unlikely. Yeah, how I was told I was found can suggest things, but we have no idea what. Not really. Definitely not just those two things.” 

Her hope for some re-connection to reality seems to be answered as Fitz nods, looking sheepish. 

“Sorry, you’re right. I didn’t realize. They could also be mostly generally decent except maybe also xenophobic, or something along those lines, so if you went on a dramatic quest to meet them it would turn out that after all your work and hopes, there isn’t any place with them for you, or a chance of real understanding, because being a Time Lord makes you too different. That’s definitely a solid third possibility.”

“Like a combination of Odo and Spock,” Anji says, nodding seriously. 

The Doctor wonders, if she asked very nicely, the Judoon would be able to find a proper cell to throw her into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes it's a narrative based universe, and you just have to live in it. knowing it's not even *your* narrative. 
> 
> probably really complete now (the sequel where they go on the quest for 13 to try to prove that the Doctor isn't the core of several universes probably gets into a bit too much for me)


	3. A Matter of Counselling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> escape attempts occasionally have consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things not treated with any seriousness this chapter: mental health, my theories on how bad at it Time Lord society is, and the extreme creepiness of the Doctor's (alternate universe but canon) messing with the life of his therapist
> 
> i thought i had reached the end, and then i remembered book!eight's response to blowing up gallifrey was 'i'm just going to delete that from my mind, time to go shove someone into a fire pit'. i love him.

The counsellor smiles at them. She has been smiling relentlessly at them since they were shoved through the door. She’s not a Judoon. In fact, the Doctor doesn’t recognize the counsellor’s species, a rarity she would usually appreciate as the number of new experiences tends to shrink after a couple thousand years knocking around the galaxy. It’s possible that the counsellor’s constant smile is just a feature of her species and not a device being employed to try to beat them into submission and emotional openness. 

It’s probably a nice smile. 

(Even before you consider the number and variation of species in the universe, just sticking to one small planet, a backwards place in the Mutter’s Spiral, for example, there’s a wide variation in the meaning of ‘nice smile’ that should mean constant cultural confusion in the face of aliens. Luckily, because people can get a little uncomfortable if they dwell too long on what a ‘psychic translator’ actually means, most of the time the Doctor’s friends don’t have time to think about whether they should be able to read meaning in an alien smile, as they’re far too busy running from the meaning the read in alien glares.)

Fitz is clutching one of the pillows defensively. It’s perfectly angled to throw off the depth of an edged weapon or to take some of the impact of a blunt instrument, as well as providing him with something to clutch after the Doctor had detached him from her arm. There’s probably some dramatic point about how traveling with the Doctor has left him alarmed in the face of someone who says they just want to help. On the other hand, the counsellor is humanoid and could easily fall within the broad range of ‘attractive’, so this is the better outcome. Besides, it’s a perfectly reasonable reaction. If the Doctor was less annoyed, she might grab for some protection herself. 

“I’ve been told that the two of you are having a little trouble settling in,” the counsellor says in a musical voice that projects empathy and understanding. Fitz tries to fit more of himself behind the pillow. The Doctor suppresses the urge to glare. 

The Doctor _wants_ to say that she’s not having any trouble ‘settling in’. The Doctor’s ‘trouble’ is that she has been locked in a space prison full of people from broken timelines without trial or explanation of why she’s been locked up. Though, considering everything she’s heard, if she _did_ have a trial it would no doubt end up being an even bigger farce than her last one, and contain exactly the same amount of humor (e.g. only that that she herself provided as a pillar of strength in trying times), but that doesn’t mean she has to like it. Or meekly accept her fate, because she’s broken out of _very many_ prisons, thank you, and, no, she doesn’t want to talk about if there’s any deep meaning behind why she keeps getting locked up, and just because it’s taking a bit longer than she might like, don’t think that they’re going to keep her here for long. What she needs is a few more gadgets, not being tossed in with a prison counsellor who has a permanent smile. 

That’s what she _wants_ to say. She manages to refrain, with a truly heroic effort. Not that heroism requires anyone to notice, but this particular feat is pretty damn impressive.

* * *

“This could be a good thing,” Anji had said an hour before, when she’d been allowed to visit the holding cell to explain what had happened. Anji could say things like that, because she had been in the infirmary, trying to get an aspirin, and so hadn’t been part of their latest reconnaissance plan. 

“How could this be a good thing?” The Doctor had asked, perhaps a little more frayed than she’d like to admit. 

“Electrodes,” Fitz had muttered gloomily. “Probably already gotten her with them.”

“It’s a chance to learn more about how this place works,” Anji had said.

“Alien slugs in the brain,” Fitz had muttered, continuing his monologue, ignored by everyone. 

“I don’t think the counsellor is going to provide the secret answers, Anji,” the Doctor had tried very hard not to snap. Mainly because whenever she got annoyed at Anji, a long list of reasons Anji had to be annoyed at _her_ started running through her mind. She had _really_ not appreciated that selective amnesia _nearly_ enough. 

“Brainwashing drugs.”

“It’s something new,” Anji had said, folding her arms. “The counsellor isn’t a Judoon, and you’re the one who’s always said that they’re working for a different species. Who knows what you might be able to pick up? At the very least, you need to convince her that you don’t need to be on some higher security level. I already seeded the ground for that.”

“Metal implants stuck right in the grey matter.”

The Doctor had regarded Anji’s satisfied expression with great wariness. “How did you seed the ground?”

The Doctor wishes that she could stop remember things like ‘technically kidnapped’ or ‘dead boyfriend’ or ‘tortured’ or ‘weird psychic resonance with terraformed babies’, because it’s really cutting into the extremely well-deserved annoyance.

* * *

The long minute of silence is finally broken when the counsellor claps her hands together in a far too cheery manner, clearly deciding to pretend that she hadn’t been waiting for one of them to say anything. 

“Well, I have the forms you filled out right here. I saw a lot of good things! Some clear demonstrations that you’re thinking about what the other is going through.”

The Doctor exchanges a look with Fitz. The counsellor had (cheerily, of course) suggested that they fill out what they felt their ‘partner’ was struggling with. At the time, the Doctor had been annoyed that Fitz had nodded along when the counsellor had repeated Anji’s story about ‘relationship issues’ driving a need to try to get some space, instead of some greater issue driving a desire to try spacewalking without a suit. Actually, she’s still annoyed at his tacit agreement, but maybe she should have gone for a bit less honesty. 

The counsellor runs a long finger across what looks like an electronic clipboard. 

“Doctor – yes, I see, only ‘Doctor’ – to paraphrase a little, you wrote that Fitz thinks that if he pretends that he’s not having an identity crisis long enough, it’s not actually happening, and that his first instinct is to lie and his second is to double down on that first lie.” Why that’s worthy of a big smile, the Doctor doesn’t know. 

The counsellor then turns her smile on Fitz. “And Fitz, you wrote that the Doctor ‘just found out she might be adopted but doesn’t know for sure because –’”

“Because everyone’s dead,” Fitz offers, helpfully. 

“Oh, ‘because everyone’s dead’, that makes a _lot_ more sense,” the little chuckle is even more unnecessary than the smile. Possibly even more unnecessary than Fitz’s ‘clarifying’ explanation. 

“Yeah, it’s like, ‘oh, it turns out I might have been adopted’, but, also, ‘everyone’s dead’ so it can be a little awkward getting really into it.” He pats her shoulder, as if he’s attempting to offer emotional support. 

The Doctor mouths, ‘I’m almost certain you’re the evil version’, which he pretends not to be able to understand.

“Yes, that must be difficult.” The counsellor tries on a sad smile, before it grows bright again. Literally, the woman appears to be generating a low glow. “It seems to me that you’ve both identified the main issue as troubles with identity. Don’t worry, that’s very common here. Why don’t we start thinking of some more _constructive_ ways to deal with our feelings!”

* * *

The Doctor believes strongly in the importance of taking care of your mental health. Huge advocate. Get those feelings out, that’s what she always says. Maybe not to _her_ , as she’s not that sort of Doctor, but, she’s very supportive of going and talking to someone else. Or talking to her with the understanding that she’s not listening. 

Fitz has assured her that he used to spend long hours complaining – that is, feeling free to share his emotions openly without fear of judgement and against the ideas that his society tried to internalize, to the Doctor. The Doctor had definitely not been listening. It had been a great system. Fitz had eventually even learned the names of a few tools, though he usually mixed them up when asked to hand one over. 

It had taken a while for the Doctor to realize that human psychology was a complicated subject. In the sense that two different humans could have their own unique, sometimes quite different, feelings and reactions to the same circumstances. In her defense, or maybe defense of her society, it’s _not_ one of those things that comes from having been taught that there were primitive species in the universe, and those species were pretty much any that wasn’t ‘Time Lord’. At least, not in the way it might sound. After all, it had taken her a few more regenerations before she realized that the same might be true for her fellow Gallifreyans. The idea that they were individuals with a range of emotions and reactions that, even when they were different than hers, might have some sort of interior logic, had been a bit shocking.

But these days she rejects the harmful notions of sanity and madness that Gallifrey teaches. Or had taught, before it had been totally destroyed by _someone_ (not her, this time, probably, though the emphasis can sometimes confuse her). They had taken the idea of mind over matter to extremes, and the idea that madness was just something that could happen to certain regenerations and those bodies should be locked up is, ah, something she tends not to bring up with her friends. She’s _way_ beyond that. 

Bring on the psychologists, that’s what the Doctor says. Admittedly, the exact context in which she had said that had involved robot duplicates of Freud and Jung wielding axes and repeating mistranslated and extremely simplified catchphrases to represent their approach to the discipline, but the concept can definitely be generalized. The adventures in the TARDIS can be hard on people, she fully recommends getting it out there and talking to someone qualified to help. 

Yes, the time she had gone to visit a therapist a few regenerations back the session had had to end early due to aliens ‘mysteriously’ attacking around the time the therapist had brought up a ‘guilt complex’, but these things happen. But he hadn’t gone back in time to change the therapist’s life into something that would shape the woman into a different person, so it had been a personal best.

* * *

The counsellor beams at them, her species must have incredible facial muscles. 

The Doctor smiles back, like the well-adjusted person she definitely is. Fitz is still doodling on his hand with the marker they were supposed to use to write nice adjectives about the other. That part had gone really well. Hopefully the counsellor has already forgotten what happened when she asked them to write nice adjectives about themselves. 

Maybe she also has a key to her spaceship and is going to hand it right over to the obviously wrongly imprisoned and only in need of escape not-patients. The Doctor swears that if she does, she won’t even pretend to leave Anji behind. She really means it. 

“Good work today!” The number of exclamation marks have gone up. Somehow, the Doctor doesn’t actually think it’s a good sign. “Let’s plan on meeting next week, maybe we can talk a bit about those abandonment issues then. 

“Like being sent to a different universe as a baby,” Fitz doesn’t exactly whisper. 

“What was that you said about things that can _feel_ like five thousand years,” the Doctor hisses back.

“Do you really want to get into that? You?” Fitz is holding that marker very tightly.

The counsellor coughs. They both straighten and try to smile at her. “Remember your homework! Treat yourself as you would want someone you love to be treated!”

* * *

Fitz flops back onto the bed. “I don’t think I’m cut out for counselling.”

“It was probably good for you,” Anji says, not looking up from her book. 

The Doctor decides that she can probably pretend to leave Anji behind for a little bit.


End file.
